What to name non-departing Big East schools? Revive 'Metro Conference'

Mar. 5, 2013
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Cincinnati guard JaQuon Parker drives the ball to the basket against Connecticut forward DeAndre Daniels and forward Tyler Olander during the second half at the XL Center in a game this season. / David Butler II, USA TODAY Sports

by Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports

by Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports

Once the paperwork is signed and the money is split, a group of 11 football and basketball schools that used to be known as the Big East are going to be looking for a new identity and a fresh start.

It won't necessarily be easy.

Though the backing of ESPN will help, what do you call a collection of six schools from Conference USA, three from the old Big East, Temple and Navy as they try to establish a new brand in college sports that will: a) Be representative of the members and b) Not engender the kind of snark that ate away at the credibility of the league for the past several years?

The obvious answer is to revive an old friend: The defunct Metro Conference, not to be mistaken with the current Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

"I think if it's something they feel would help identify the conference and the schools, it certainly would be appropriate," Ralph McFillen, the former Metro commissioner until it dissolved in 1995, told USA TODAY Sports by phone Tuesday. "It's interesting what has taken place and what is going on within conferences and so forth. It's interesting to see some of (what happened to the Metro) come back around now."

If the Big East re-branded as the Metro, it would be a name filled not only with history, but irony, too.

The Metro formed in 1975 as a league built around two factors: Basketball and television, and in many ways it became the precursor of the original Big East. The six charter members of the Metro included Cincinnati, Louisville, Tulane and Memphis, later adding Florida State, Virginia Tech, Southern Miss and South Carolina â?? all of which had independent football programs. Saint Louis, the other charter member, didn't have football.

Throughout the 1980s, the league â?? with the backing of Raycom Sports television â?? was one of the strongest in college basketball with great players, legendary coaching personalities and exposure in big cities in the South and mid-Atlantic.

In many ways, it was the model for what the Catholic 7, who decided to break away from the Big East's football side with the help of Fox Sports, are trying to do now.

"It was the forerunner of the TV conference," McFillen said. "We had a lot of success. But it was the football issue that was kind of our Achilles heel and continues to haunt people."

McFillen saw the future. He wanted the Metro to sponsor football and even laid out a plan in 1990 for the first "Super Conference" that would have invited schools like Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Temple, Rutgers and West Virginia, all of whom were playing football as independents at the time.

But a dividing line had been drawn within his own conference. The basketball powers such as Memphis, Cincinnati and Louisville kept the NCAA Tournament money they earned instead of splitting it up, which is how conferences have traditionally operated. As a result, there wasn't much reason for South Carolina and Florida State to consider joining for football, and eventually they got invitations to the SEC and ACC, respectively.

McFillen's superconference plan, which would have changed the course of college sports history, never got off the ground. And by 1995, it was too late. With football independence no longer viable for most programs in the college athletics, the remnants of the Metro and the Great Midwest merged to form the hybrid Conference USA.

"The football people were saying to the basketball folks, primarily, you keep your basketball money and we'll keep our football programs independent. Then the basketball schools resented the football schools for not wanting to play football (in the Metro)," McFillen said. "That was a distinction that made the Metro unique, so to speak, which only resulted in the demise of the conference."

It's a familiar theme for the likes of UConn, Cincinnati and South Florida, which have watched the Big East they were a part of crumble around them thanks to greed and the agenda-driven split between the football and basketball schools. Same for Houston and SMU, who were once part of the powerful Southwest Conference before its demise.

If there is one thing that brings most of the 11 schools together in whatever name this league takes on, it's their location (almost all big cities) and a history of nomadic conference survival. And the fact it has all come back around, much the way it did in 1995, makes the Metro Conference an intriguing brand to revive.

McFillen, 71, said to the best of his knowledge, nobody owns the name, so it would be available if a league wanted it. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the trademark has been dead since May 6, 1996.

"I obviously have been removed from it for a period of time so I really don't have a strong opinion as to what they can or should be doing to try to keep things together," McFillen said. "But it does remind me a little bit of those days. It's ironic to see what has happened."